Author: William Bowe

With less than an hour to go before polls close, I am finally withdrawing a few of my predicted Labor victories from my election guide: Clayfield, Barron River and Toowoomba North. I thought long and hard about including Keppel but utlimately decided that Paul Hoolihan would be saved by "sophomore surge". The Labor seats mospt likely to fall would appear to be as follows:

Clayfield (Labor 1.2%):. Writing in the Courier-Mail, ABC Radio presenter Madonna King reports that Liberal insiders believe they will win the seat. The Liberals have been targeting the seat with pamphlets showing a picture of a cemetery with the message: "This is the reality of health care under Peter Beattie". Former Liberal leader Joan Sheldon said on ABC Radio she expected the Liberals to win the seat. The precedent of Currumbin in 2004 is instructive of the potential effects of ministerial controversy, and it has prompted me to change my tip here and give it to the Liberals.

Barron River (Labor 3.1%): My instincts always told me that the retiring incumbent factor should make the difference here, and I have now decided to follow them. Former Liberal leader Joan Sheldon said on ABC Radio she expected the Liberals to win.

Kawana (Labor 1.5%): It is generally thought that the Traveston Dam controversy and the government’s dithering over location of a new hospital will deliver this seat to the Liberals.

Mudgeeraba (Labor 1.9%): A number of reports emerged earlier that Labor had "all but written off " the seat, but it has not been widely discussed late in the campaign. Liberal insiders quoted by Madonna King in the Courier-Mail are "hopeful"; Greg Roberts and Andrew Fraser of The Australian say only that Labor research indicates they “could lose”.

Indooroopilly (Labor 2.1%): Indooroopilly is a natural Liberal seat that must surely return to the fold sooner or later, but there are mixed messages as to whether that time is now. The Poll Bludger hears that this is one seat where Labor’s superior campaign resources has not been apparent, as Liberal candidate Peter Turner has invested heavily in his own campaign. On ABC Radio yesterday morning, Madonna King asked her election panellists why it was more widely anticipated that the Liberals would win Clayfield than Indooroopilly, but failed to extract a response worth relating.

Keppel (Labor 3.8%): Keppel is not natural Labor territory, having been won for them in 2004 upon the retirement of a long-term Nationals member. If there is something in the talk that the Nationals are travelling better in the north than the Liberals in the south, there is a high chance Keppel will return to the fold. Former Labor Treasurer David Hamill was quick to nominate the seat as one that might change hands when speaking on Madonna King’s program.

Aspley (Labor 4.3%): This was specifically nominated by Steven Wardill of the Courier-Mail as a seat that had Labor worried, reportedly due to sagging Labor support in the outer suburbs. Madonna King in the Courier-Mail reported bullish noises from the Liberal camp.

Bundaberg (Labor 5.3%): The balance of opinion is that the Coalition’s botched new hospital promise will save Labor’s bacon in the seat that delivered the Jayant Patel affair. My own hesitant judgement is that the apparent certainty of an overall Labor victory will fortify locals to deliver a protest vote.

Toowoomba North (Labor 7.3%): Toowoomba North is being much more widely discussed than other seats with similar margins. Dennis Atkins of the Courier-Mail says the "local hospital story is shocking and water issues are as hot there as anywhere". The latter are of particular significance given that the Nationals candidate, Toowoomba councillor Lyle Shelton, was the public spearhead of the successful "no" campaign at the referendum on treated sewage water in Toowoomba’s drinking supply.

Pumicestone (Labor 5.4%): Greg Roberts and Andrew Fraser of The Australian report that the seat is "at risk because of the water issue because of the water issue and troubles with Caboolture Hospital"

Going purely on margins, Cairns (3.9 per cent), Hervey Bay (4.0 per cent), Broadwater (4.1 per cent) and Burleigh (5.0 per cent) would look to be well in contention, but they have generated little discussion in the latter half of the campaign. By contrast, interest has been expressed in the following less likely looking seats:

Cleveland (Labor 8.7%): Labor is losing a member of 14 years’ standing in Darryl Briskey. Greg Roberts and Andrew Fraser of The Australian describe the seat as ‘at risk’; Steven Wardill of the Courier-Mail named the seat as one of two in which Labor polling was picking up "significant swings"; Madonna King in the Courier-Mail says Labor believes the seat "could be lost".

Kallangur (Labor 13.5%): Madonna King in the Courier-Mail says many Nationals are optimistic about this unlikely looking prospect; Dennis Atkins in the Courier-Mail also refers to "optimistic talk" in the Nationals camp.

Mulgrave (Labor 7.7%): Dennis Atkins is still hearing "optimistic talk" from the Nationals, whose 20-year-old candidate Krista Dunford has proved a hit with the media.

Mansfield (Labor 8.6%): Steven Wardill’s report that this seat has been "targeted" by the Liberals, but says otherwise troubling Labor polling shows them doing better here than in Aspley and Cleveland.

Everton (Labor 11.6%): This seat is off most observers’ radar, but Greg Roberts and Andrew Fraser of The Australian describe it as "at risk".

Redlands (Labor 8.6%) and Whitsunday (Labor 14.8%): Madonna King in the Courier-Mail includes these in a list of seats that many Nationals are "optimistic about".

Then there are the potential Labor gains, the obvious candidates being the three they lost at mid-term by-elections. I am maintaining my assessment that Chatsworth and Redcliffe, which were narrowly won by the Liberals in the context of a low-turnout by-election, will return to the Labor fold; whereas the more naturally conservative seat of Gaven will stay with the Nationals. The remaining omissions from my list are the independent-held seats of Noosa and Gympie, but there has never been much doubt in my mind that these would be won by the Liberals and Nationals respectively. Final tally: Labor 55, Nationals 19, Liberals 10, independent 4, One Nation 1.

If there is any substance to the notion that the Coalition has staged a late fightback, Gary Morgan will emerge from an election with bragging rights for the first time in many a long year. What is most remarkable about yesterday’s Roy Morgan poll is how very different it is from every other Morgan Queensland poll of the past two terms. The Labor primary vote of 45 per cent is 4 per cent lower than their previous worst Morgan result since the 2001 election, while the Coalition’s 39 per cent is 3 per cent higher than their previous best. However, the results are not the only thing that distinguishes this survey from its predecessors. Firstly, the sample of 604 compares with the 1,500 normally polled by Morgan; secondly, the survey was conducted by phone rather than the usual face-to-face. Gary Morgan himself remains a vocal critic of phone polling, but nonetheless displayed characteristic confidence in his figures when speaking with Madonna King on ABC Radio yesterday.

Newspoll on the other hand has produced identical primary vote figures to those published yesterday by Galaxy Research, an agency founded by former Newspoll general manager David Briggs. Both have Labor on 48 per cent and the Coalition on 38 per cent, although Newspoll produced a two-party result of 55-45 compared with Galaxy’s 56.5-43.5. Newspoll provides at least some support for the idea of a Coalition recovery since last week, when it recorded Labor’s primary vote at 52 per cent. The following chart shows the Labor primary vote in the main agencies’ polls over the past two months; note that this only amounts to two polls in Morgan’s case.

One last poll before closing: yesterday’s Gold Coast Bulletin featured a survey by Thomas Direct of 433 voters in Currumbin. This is the paper’s second such poll of the campaign, the other being published two weeks ago. At the time I was unable to get hold of a detailed breakdown of the results, so here are figures from both polls after distribution of the undecided:

As the Queensland election campaign enters its death throes, momentum is building behind the idea, if not the reality, of a late Coalition revival. Centrebet has received a last-minute flood of bets on Labor losing more than 10 seats, bringing its shortest price Labor seat outcome down from 59 to 55. AAP reckons "internal party research from both sides shows the Labor vote softening, albeit in patches across a range of safe and marginal seats". Peter Beattie is predictably disinclined to scotch the idea, warning of "movement against the Government in the last week". But unless you count Tuesday’s unconvincing Roy Morgan poll, the only evidence anyone can point to is party polling which might well be, as Lawrence Springborg would have it, "constructed research from the Labor Party … to try to blunt what they would perceive as a protest vote".

This morning brings yet another published poll to give credence to Springborg’s claim. According to the Courier-Mail’s Galaxy Research poll, Labor’s primary vote is up 1 per cent from the 2004 election to 48 per cent, with the Coalition also up slightly from 35.5 per cent to 38 per cent. The slack has been taken up from the ongoing decline of One Nation and its splinter groups, while the Greens have reportedly made late gains. It may still be true, as many have said, that the picture across the state is "lumpy", with Labor holding up in some areas and fading in others. Two assessments of the situation are worth quoting at length, the first from Dennis Atkins in Tuesday’s Courier-Mail:

The Nationals went into this poll confident they would pick up at least seven more seats than the 16 currently held and senior strategists for the Opposition still believe they are looking at an outcome with a "2" in front of it. High on their list are the Labor seats of Bundaberg, Toowoomba North, Hervey Bay and Keppel and a pair of Independent-held electorates, Gympie and Nanango. There is also optimistic talk of taking Mulgrave in the far north and Kallangur in the metropolitan northeast. Putting those last two seats aside, the other four Labor seats are certainly in play and a case can be made for Labor losing one or all of them. Toowoomba North’s local hospital story is shocking and water issues are as hot there as anywhere, while Bundaberg is the epicentre of everything horrible about Queensland Health. In Hervey Bay there is a bad hospital record and Keppel is a seat Labor never expected to win in 2004 and could easily lose.

The second comes from Greg Roberts and Andrew Fraser in today’s Australian:

The seat of Pumicestone is at risk because of the water issue and troubles with Caboolture Hospital … Labor seats within Brisbane that are marginal, such as Indooroopilly and Clayfield, appear safe. But supposedly safer seats on the city fringe are at risk, such as Cleveland and Everton, which is held by senior minister Rod Welford. Labor research suggests the two seats picked up by the Liberals in mid-term by-elections – Redcliffe and Chatsworth – could be returned, while outside Brisbane, Labor could lose Toowoomba North and the Gold Coast’s Mudgereeba.

All of which might yet prompt one or two revisions to the Poll Bludger’s election guide, but it is unlikely more than one or two seats will be shifted out of the Labor column. Some final Campaign Update additions:

Currumbin (Liberal 3.2%): The government has effectively scotched a controversial housing project in Currumbin Valley linked to former Labor heavyweight Terry Mackenroth. The Devine Group’s Hideaway development, which had been approved by Gold Coast City Council and upheld by the Planning and Environment Court, will now be called in for "review" after the election. According to Greg Stoltz of the Courier-Mail, "Labor sources said the project was ‘dead’". The project had been opposed by both Liberal member Jann Stuckey and Labor candidate Michael Riordan.

Bundaberg (Labor 5.3%): The Liberal campaign to tar Labor candidate Sonja Cleary with the Jayant Patel brush went all the way to federal parliament yesterday, where Health Minister Tony Abbott called for her disendorsement. As a local nurse, Cleary served on the District Health Council when its chairman signed a supportive letter to Patel after allegations were first raised against him. It also discussed efforts to identify those who had released information concerning Patel, which Abbott portrayed as a "witch-hunt against whistleblowers".

Gaven (Nationals 3.4%): Former Liberal vice-president and Gold Coast party identity Jim MacAnally has made a well-timed repeat of his criticism of the Coalition deal that allowed the Nationals to take Gaven. MacAnally claims the Liberals had "five times the electoral support of the Nationals in Gold Coast seats", which will come as no surprise to anyone who looks at the corresponding federal election results.

Caloundra (Liberal 1.3%): Lisa Allen of the Australian Financial Review reports on local anger that Caloundra’s Tripcony Hibiscus caravan park has been exempted from the government’s promise to cease selling parks for development.

Before I go, allow me to promote the fact that I will as usual be live-blogging the election count from 6pm EST tomorrow. Do come along.

When a modern Australian political party enters the final week of a campaign with a big lead in the polls, it remains nervously mindful of two cautionary precedents: the 1995 Queensland election, which brought Wayne Goss back to earth with a thud, and the 1999 Victorian election, which saw off the seemingly invicible Jeff Kennett. Human nature being what it is, those who had blithely assumed these governments would be returned were not attracted to the idea that they might simply have got it wrong. A more popular explanation was that the voters had been mistaken – that they had gone against their real preferred party because they believed its victory to be inevitable, and thought they could safely lodge a "protest vote".

Of course, it’s easy for me to be cynical, because I wasn’t in the electoral commentary game at the time (and I would no doubt have called it for Goss and Kennett if I had been). There is no question that the two elections stand testament to the importance of managing expectations, a lesson Peter Beattie and Labor have learned well. What then to make of the news that "secret Labor research" has appeared in the cubby hole of Courier-Mail journo Steven Wardill, and that it shows – surprise, surprise – Labor not doing nearly as well as everybody thinks:

… the Coalition may win some safe Labor seats while a host of marginal seats are too close to call. Labor insiders are describing their own internal polling as "lumpy", with the party facing large swings for and against it throughout the state. In other areas, support has remained unchanged since the election began. In a shock result, Labor is at risk of losing the safe seat of Cleveland, which had a margin of 8.7 per cent under the retiring Daryl Briskey. In the marginal seat of Aspley, sitting member Bonny Barry’s primary support has fallen from 50 per cent to 44, a 1 per cent lead from Liberal’s candidate, Tracy Davis. However, the Labor vote appears much stronger in the seat of Mansfield, which had been targeted by the Coalition.

There is no question that Labor has released these results to promote the idea that the election is up for grabs, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t genuine. In fact, there is one good reason to think that they probably are: the figures that are actually provided don’t quite match the claims made for them. All we are told for sure is that Aspley and Cleveland are closer than you might expect. Are these the only figures Labor provided, or has Wardill seen numbers for this "host of marginal seats" that are "too close to call"? And if the Coalition truly has "stormed back into contention", shouldn’t it be making a clean sweep of marginals, given the current numbers in parliament?

Not quite sure what the deal is with the Glug website ("an eccentric mix of wine, drinks, politics, food, sport and other interesting things", apparently), but I am grateful to it for making my particular obsession in life seem a little less unusual. In conjunction with Crikey, the site is running a competition that requires participants to nominate Labor’s percentage chance of victory in each of the state’s 89 electorates. Prizes include "superior Glug wines", Crikey subscriptions and "incredible bragging rights". Crikey’s Richard Farmer tells us that "early Crikey contest polling gives Labor the following percentage chance of victory in the 89 individual seats":

Albert 91%; Algester 93%, Ashgrove 91%, Aspley 91%, Barron River 65%, Beaudesert 16%, Brisbane Central 95%, Broadwater 65%, Bulimba 92%, Bundaberg 62%, Bundamba 93%, Burdekin 26%, Burleigh 74%, Burnett 19%, Cairns 82%, Callide 10%, Caloundra 39%, Capalaba 93%, Charters Towers 22%, Chatsworth 69%, Clayfield 54%, Cleveland 82%, Cook 88%, Cunningham 13%, Currumbin 48%, Darling Downs 10%, Everton 92%, Ferny Grove 94%, Fitzroy 91%, Gaven 39%, Gladstone 19%, Glass House 83%, Greenslopes 91%, Gregory 9%, Gympie 13%, Hervey Bay 75%, Hinchinbrook 23%, Inala 95%, Indooroopilly 62%, Ipswich 94%, Ipswich West 87%, Kallangur 91%, Kawana 54%, Keppel 73%, Kurwongbah 91%, Lockyer 14%, Logan 93%, Lytton 96%, Mackay 91%, Mansfield 88%, Maroochydore 19%, Maryborough 11%, Mirani 8%, Moggill 20%, Mount Coottha 91%, Mount Gravatt 91%, Mount Isa 89%, Mount Ommaney 87%, Mudgeeraba 52%, Mulgrave 81%, Mundingburra 85%, Murrumba 91%, Nanango 9%, Nicklin 9%, Noosa 38%, Nudgee 91%, Pumicestone 78%, Redcliffe 56%, Redlands 89%, Robina 22%, Rockhampton 93%, Sandgate 90%, South Brisbane 95%, Southern Downs 11%, Southport 80%, Springwood 88%, Stafford 93%, Stretton 91%, Surfers Paradise 13%, Tablelands 9%, Thuringowa 86%, Toowoomba North 66%, Toowoomba South 13%, Townsville 86%, Warrego 13%, Waterford 92%, Whitsunday 84%, Woodridge 95%, Yeerongpilly 92%.

The lightweights among you might prefer to try the old-fashioned method of tipping the total number of Labor seats through Centrebet, which is currently offering the shortest odds on 58. As my more dedicated readers will already know, my own personal tips are available for perusal and ridicule on the Poll Bludger election guide. My current estimation is that the Coalition will hold all the seats it won in 2004; the Liberals will gain Kawana and Mudgeeraba from Labor and Noosa from Labor-turned-independent MP Cate Molloy; the Nationals will gain Bundaberg from Labor and Gympie from independent "candidate" (last I heard) Elisa Roberts; the Liberals will lose their by-election gains of Chatsworth and Redcliffe to Labor, whereas the Nationals will hold Gaven. It turns out that my findings are in almost perfect accord with those of Glug (which differs from me only in that it has Labor’s odds in Mudgeeraba at over 50 per cent, and then just barely), and my projection of Labor seats is exactly equal to Sportsbet’s. Final tally: Labor 58, Nationals 18, Liberal 8, independent 4, One Nation 1.

In other news, it only came to my attention yesterday that Sky News is running a program called "Queensland Votes 2006" at 9.30pm EST each night this week. Last night’s instalment featured interviews with Bruce Flegg, Barnaby Joyce and Sean Parnell of The Australian. The highlight for mine was host David Speers putting it to Flegg that Liberal members (I leave it to you to imagine which ones) had told him the party’s polling had it on track to win at least 20 seats before the August 7 leadership change.

The first heartening opinion poll to emerge for the Coalition during the Queensland election campaign turns out to be not worth the paper it’s printed on. The Herald Sun reports the Roy Morgan findings under the heading "Beattie approval rating plummets", and asserts that the figure in question has "slumped by 13 percentage points". It then transpires that this is based on a feeble sample of 268. No detailed breakdown of voting intention figures is provided, but the Roy Morgan site gives a two-party preferred result from the sample of 52.5-47.5 in Labor’s favour.

The Poll Bludger sends his condolences to the family of Steve Irwin, dead at 44.

Would it be insensitive of me to note that the death of possibly the world’s most famous Queenslander is another setback for a Coalition that needs every bit of news space it can get in the final week of the campaign? Perhaps. But don’t imagine that such thoughts aren’t going through the minds of Queensland political operators right now.

After two weeks of carelessness, the Coalition campaign was struck in its third week by misfortune. The death of his father-in-law on Wednesday took Lawrence Springborg away from the hustings for three crucial days and probably saw off any hope of momentum building in the final part of the campaign. Even on Wednesday, Tony Koch of The Australian was reporting that the Nationals had been concentrating on rural areas where the election could not possibly be decided, as they had "made a decision to protect themselves" after Bruce Flegg’s troubles early in the campaign. With only one campaign week left to salvage the situation, it can be presumed that much of Springborg’s efforts will be spent holding the line for the Nationals in Charters Towers, Burdekin and Hinchinbrook.

The parties initially responded to Springborg’s family tragedy by agreeing to suspend negative advertising, but this ended with a vengeance on Friday when the Coalition fielded an ad aggressive enough to have brought joy to Andrew Landeryou’s heart. I suppose the proper thing would be to link to it on the Coalition website, but I have been itching for an excuse to join the YouTube generation for a while now.

The impact of attack ads in the American context is well understood: they lead to significantly lower turnout. A UCLA experiment during the 1990 Californian gubernatorial campaign exposed some voters to positively worded ads and other voters to negative ones, and found that even one attack ad reduced turnout by 1 per cent. In Australia of course, such an impact would be negated (or at least mitigated) by compulsory voting, and would presumably find expression through some sort of protest vote. But minor parties and potential independent candidates seem to have been caught napping by the brief, short-notice campaign, and any impact they might be having has so far escaped the polling agencies. With respect to the major party contest, there is no certainty that the damage done to Labor will outweigh the sense that the Coalition is becoming increasingly desperate.

Some new Campaign Update additions for the electorate guide:

Charters Towers (Nationals 2.7%): The Australian carried a report by Ian Gerard on Friday which queried whether "dissatisfaction with the health system" would overcome "the voices of the thousands of coalminers who have flooded into the sprawling regional seat of Charters Towers in recent years". Labor candidate Bruce Scott (not to be confused with the federal Nationals member for Maranoa) sounded a note of caution on the latter point, saying "it depends where these miners are registered, a lot of them are probably fly-in fly-out". The electorate’s coal industry is centred around Moranbah in its south, where Labor records big majorities that are overwhelmed by Nationals-voting rural booths to the north.

Indooroopilly (Labor 2.1%): Labor member Ronan Lee’s opposition to uranium mining was back in the news after equivocal statements on the issue from Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh. Appropriately enough, Lee is among the Labor candidates to whom the Greens are recommending a second preference. AAP reports that the Coalition accused Lee of campaigning "almost as an independent" after fielding campaign signs with no ALP branding.

Clayfield (Labor 1.2%): Clayfield, which includes Brisbane Airport and is located a short distance north-east of the CBD, was a big target of the Coalition’s promise to spend an extra $1.4 billion bringing forward completion of the Airport Link and adjoining North-South Bypass Tunnel under the city.

Gaven (Nationals 3.4%): Labor was on the attack after the Gold Coast Bulletin reported Nationals member Alex Douglas had allowed his 18-year-old son to attend a high-school formal after-party held at the Bandidos bikie gang clubhouse at Mermaid Beach.